


Luck

by gubby



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, a la the in game interactions with benny, introspective, just a little implied smut, kina - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:29:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23469541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gubby/pseuds/gubby
Summary: a little bit of Benny's perspective, and what I imagine would've happened with him and my courier
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Female Courier, Benny/Courier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Luck

Benny was a betting man. He couldn’t help it. Even when there wasn’t a wager at all, he liked to take on little bets with himself. Whether or not a nice dame would turn around and glance at him, if Swank would notice his laces were untied before he tripped on a loose tile, if today was gonna be the day he died. 

He did not bet on you clawing your way through the dirt of your shallow grave and into New Vegas. He thought your death was a sure thing, and he’s convinced that for anyone else it would’ve been. He knew now that he would never know what you were like before the acquisition of the starburst scar above your brow, but that was ok. Either way, you were a feral yet sophisticated vessel of retribution, chaos, and justice here and now. When you showed up in the stunning one strapped dress, hair still dusty, lipstick scary in its slight unevenness, Benny was convinced that his luck had finally turned and turned for good. Once your luck goes so rotten that you can’t even kill someone with a point blank bullet to the head with your most reliable gun, you just can’t make it any further. 

When he invited you up, that was his fucked up way of accepting death as it stood before him. Were you a catch? Sure. But you also had the means, motive, and guts to kill him at any time. There was no mistaking that look in your eyes. If you had wanted him dead, then he’d die, and he knew it. He didn’t see the point in delaying the fate you’d decided for him, might as well go out in a good mood. 

Benny smelled like the weird cactus flower shit all the chairmen wore, some cologne equivalent of moonshine out in the wasteland. You smelled like dust and sunshine. Benny had held the platinum chip in his hands— the most advanced piece of pre-war technology ever conceived, something capable of things anyone for the last hundred years couldn’t even imagine. 

And yet, as you nestled your hand into his on the elevator ride to his suite, as his grip rested on your hips when you straddled him, as his arms tiredly wrapped around you and pulled you in a close as he could, Benny felt more powerful than he ever had holding that damned chip. You were the real thing. 

A smart man with any sense of self preservation would probably have killed you before you either killed him, conquered the world, or both. Benny never claimed to be a smart man, but to be fair he did try _once_. And a man who does the same thing again while expecting a different outcome is an insane one. 

He ran with that chip because he knew if he gave it up, he would’ve always wondered if he coulda pulled off the whole thing himself. Again, not a smart man, but he had his principles. Despite the absolutely mind-bending hey-hey and your apparent mercy for him, he still believed that his luck had turned for good. 

He still believed that when he ran off into the desert to get out of your way after you absolutely slaughtered the legion. He really meant what he wrote about having that date. He really wouldn’t have missed it for anything New Vegas could throw his way.There wasn’t much that meant anything to Benny besides power and persona his entire life. Being raised tribal sentenced him to that way of thinking. And yet, over the course of all those lonely nights in the sticks, nothing seemed to matter like seeing your pretty, uneven face again. He recounted all the different stories he’d heard about you from underlings and passer-by alike, all your feats of trickery and strength, and all the company you kept. A follower scientist, a brotherhood scribe, an NCR sniper, a caravan owner, a ghoul, the king’s mutt, an eyebot, even a fucking supermutant. Before Benny met you again, he’d assumed you to be some master of manipulation, but if just talking to you didn’t change his mind, sharing a bed with you certainly did.

You would think that knowing you’d fallen under the same spell as so many other people would make you feel insignificant and lost to statistical misfortune. On the contrary, getting to know you, even if just for one night, felt like an extraordinary stroke of luck. 

And Benny loved feeling lucky.

* * *

The desert wasn’t kind to anyone, and perhaps death would’ve been kinder, but Benny wasn’t the type to just lay down and die when he could keep on clawing his way forward. Your arrival was unexpected, but at the same time, it felt like destiny as you sat by the dying fire and cracked a Sunset Sarsaparilla. Death hadn’t arrived. No, you were something more than death. Something much stronger. 

The way you puckered your lips and sipped wasn’t ladylike, much like the rest of you. Frizzy hair and leather armor, rusty goggles caked in sand and grit. 

“Hey there, pussycat. Long time no see, huh? Shoulda known you’d come lookin’ for another taste of the Ben-man. I’ve got a face broads can’t seem to stop chasing, feels like.” Pretty much any time Benny talked it sounded like some bird squawking, puffing up his feathers to intrigue people. Maybe the fact that you found that charming was the real stroke of luck for him. 

“What’re you running for, Benny?” You said it plainly, like there couldn’t be a more obvious question. 

“Figured I’d overstayed my welcome. Caesar’s place didn’t seem like the coolest hangout, either. Thought I was only spared the same fate as those legion chumps because I was good in the sack, ya dig?” He tries not to sound nervous but it’s hard when he’s confronted with the same pretty face from his dreams, but he can only see his reflection in your goggles and not your eyes. He sees a downright pitiable guy. 

“Any idea why I came out here looking for you when I could be all cozy in the penthouse of the Lucky 38, looking over my strip?” You cooed like it was childish teasing. Like you didn’t hold his dreams in the palm of your hand as if they didn’t matter. You snapped up your goggles and he was comforted for a brief moment by your playful and compassionate stare. It was hard to reconcile the rumors about the terror of the Mojave with the image before him. 

“Couldn’t leave it at a one night stand?” 

“That was part of it.” 

If there had been anything in Benny’s mouth besides his tongue, he would have choked on it. You lie down, chin propped up on your elbows to see eye level with him, as he was resting on his arm on a crude sleeping mat.

“Come back with me. Run the Strip. I can’t ever seem to stay in one place, and I wouldn’t know what to do with New Vegas even if I wanted it. I want you to have it, no strings attached.” You paused for a beat. 

“Of course, if you fuck it all up I might have to step in again. But if you’re a benef-benevelf—fuck, if you’re a good king, and you’re still up for that date you talked about… I’d be interested.” It occurred to Benny in that moment that he really did shoot you in the head. It wasn’t exactly like he didn’t know that, he did, but he doubted that little stutter was natural. You were reaching for something you knew that suddenly was missing. And yet, here you were in front of him, giving him his hopes and dreams on a silver platter and telling him you were into him to boot. 

If that wasn’t luck, he didn’t know what was. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the caps in Vegas, pussycat.”


End file.
